My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/10/20 "Maze of the Phantom"

(instrumental piano with female vocalizations) I was obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, specifically Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The covers seemed to shout at me from their displays at the Waldenbooks or B. Dalton in the mall. The books always seemed off-limits though, not because of the satanic panic which, despite growing up in the Midwest, felt like something happening in that other America where people were still backward. The word "Advanced" made me think I wasn't skilled or experienced enough for it and the scope and variety of products spoke to a vastness of imagination that I wasn't ready to approach. AD&D, from the outside, offered structures for imagining worlds that were impossible for preteen me to conceive. But the fact of them being there made it seem achievable. Those worlds which were beyond my imagining would become mine given enough time. -6/10/20. "Maze of the Phantom" from Maze of the Phantom (one week earlier) (one week later)